Archive By Section - Opinion

Liberty County seemingly has a rather poor reputation among a portion of its population. On a routine basis, people contact the Courier to express their dismay about certain powerhouses in the community - private and elected - who appear to run over the "little guy" on their way to financial success.

Imagine rotting in a prison cell, missing your child's birthday, your anniversary, family gatherings. Now imagine you're innocent. This is a fate that befalls far too many Georgians. We like to think we protect our citizenry from such a tragedy. We can never know just how many innocent Americans have fallen victim to the shortcomings of our criminal justice system. What we do know is that if people caught up in this system do not have good attorneys, the number of innocence cases will continue to grow.

I am very concerned about a potentially dangerous situation that exists on Highway 84 (Islands Highway) just east of the I-95 interchange. The Liberty County Development Authority has developed the Tradeport East Industrial Park which includes the Target and Tire Rack distribution centers. I appreciate the new job growth that comes along with this new development; however, I am very concerned about the dangerous conditions created by large trucks attempting to enter the industrial park.

Seventeen years ago, the Georgia public, fed up with car insurance rates that almost doubled from the 1982 to 1988, voted an insurance commissioner out of office and replaced him with one who promised to fight automobile rate increases. And following the 1990 campaigns, the Georgia General Assembly changed the law, giving the state insurance commissioner approval power over rate increases. Because of that, Georgia now has the fourth lowest rates in the Southeast and is among the top 20 lowest in the country, according to Allison Wall, executive director of Georgia Watch, a consumer watchdog group.

Eyesore of the week: The strange thing about pointing out all these eyesores, is that nothing is being done about any of them. My nomination for this week is the abandoned, overgrown lot on First Street in Lake George with a junk trailer with windows broken out, sitting in the back of the lot and probably harboring rats and snakes. According to neighbors, it was abandoned eight years ago. So does that mean that the county tax office now owns it? If so, please, please clean it up.

Autumn is a busy travel time for my husband, Lindsay, and me. We both went to the University of Georgia and we "bleed red and black." Translation: we are pretty avid fans. When September comes, we head up to Athens for as many home games as we can. So this is a good time to highlight some tips for making road trips as environmentally-friendly as possible.

The annual release of SAT scores always demands a bit of creative writing by a state leadership that rose to power on the promise of improved performance. Georgia's scores remain far too low, and the progress far too slow, so the governor and state school superintendent thumb through their thesauruses for new ways to disguise the fact that little has changed.

Newark, N.J., is not easily rattled. But it has been grieving since August, when four kids heading off to college and a promising future - a rarity in this town of hard streets and bad public schools - were forced to kneel against a wall in a schoolyard and were shot in the back of the head.

Karl Rove loomed so large in our politics that no one could see him clearly. He was both underestimated and overestimated, and he leaves the White House with both significant political achievements and frustrated ambitions.

All over the country, political candidates, consultants, reporters, campaign volunteers and politically active citizens are pondering a single question: What do voters want in a candidate? Will voters be motivated in next year's elections by issues, personalities or some intangible mix of qualities in the candidates they're considering?

Articles by Section - Opinion

Editor, On Dec. 16, 1773, demonstrators destroyed an entire shipment of tea in the Boston Harbor in protest of taxation without representation. Today, we have ultra-taxation with representation. At the rate that we are going, we will just sign over our employment checks and accept the spending money that our government gives us.

If you watched the Super Bowl a couple of weeks ago - and reports say that 114 million of us did - perhaps you saw a portion of the reprehensible behavior of Seattle wide receiver Doug Baldwin who, after scoring a touchdown, proceeded to mime pulling down his pants and squatting as if on a commode, before dropping the ball to the ground as if using the restroom. The NFL fined Baldwin $11,000, which has to be chump change to this boor. Astonishingly, the incident has gotten very little mention in the media. You can bet this kind of obscene showboating ...

The Georgia Senate had a busy week. We held numerous committee meetings to review legislation and listen to testimony either opposing or supporting bills being considered. The committee process is where the bills are vetted before being considered by the Senate, and it is a crucial part of the legislative process.

February 11, 2015|
By State Sen. Ben Watson
Special to the Courier
|Opinion

What mystical powder or elixir anoints our elected officials with the knowledge contained in the Encyclopedia Britannica and all the experience amassed by mankind since Adam and Eve? Apparently, the substance - whatever it is - imparts this knowledge and experience within the first 30 seconds of being sworn into office.